 Robert Todd Carroll
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neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)
Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is one of many New Age Large Group Awareness Training programs. NLP is a competitor with Landmark Forum, Tony Robbins, and legions of other enterprises which, like the Sophists of ancient Greece, travel from town to town to teach their wisdom for a fee. Robbins is probably the most successful "graduate" of NLP. He started his own empire after transforming from a self-described "fat slob" to a firewalker to (in his own words) "the nation's foremost authority on the psychology of peak performance and personal, professional and organizational turnaround." The founders of NLP, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, might disagree. NLP has something for everybody, the sick and the healthy, individual or corporation. In addition to being an agent for change for healthy individuals taught en masse, NLP is also used for individual psychotherapy for problems as diverse as phobias and schizophrenia. NLP also aims at transforming corporations, showing them how to achieve their maximum potential and achieve great success. What is NLP? NLP was begun in the mid-seventies by a linguist (Grinder) and a mathematician (Bandler) who had strong interests in (a) successful people, (b) psychology, (c) language and (d) computer programming. It is a difficult to define NLP because those who started it and those involved in it use such vague and ambiguous language that NLP means different things to different people. While it is difficult to find a consistent description of NLP among those who claim to be experts at it, one metaphor keeps recurring. NLP claims to help people change by teaching them to program their brains. We were given brains, we are told, but no instruction manual. NLP offers you a user-manual for the brain. The brain-manual seems to be a metaphor for NLP training, which is sometimes referred to as "software for the brain." Furthermore, NLP, consciously or unconsciously, relies heavily upon (1) the notion of the unconscious mind as constantly influencing conscious thought and action; (2) metaphorical behavior and speech, especially building upon the methods used in Freud's Interpretation of Dreams; and (3) hypnotherapy as developed by Milton Erickson. NLP is also heavily influenced by the work of Gregory Bateson and Noam Chomsky. One common thread in NLP is the emphasis on teaching a variety of communication and persuasion skills, and using self-hypnosis to motivate and change oneself. Most NLP practitioners advertising on the WWW make grand claims about being able to help just about anybody become just about anything. The following is typical:
Some advocates claim that they can teach an infallible method of telling when a person is lying, but others recognize that this is not possible. Some claim that people fail only because their teachers have not communicated with them in the right "language". One NLP guru, Dale Kirby, informs us that one of the presuppositions of NLP is "No one is wrong or broken." So why seek remedial change? On the other hand, what Mr. Kirby does have to say about NLP which is intelligible does not make it very attractive. For example, he says that according to NLP "There is no such thing as failure. There is only feedback." Was NLP invented by the U.S. Military to explain their "incomplete successes"? When the space shuttle blew up within minutes of launch, killing everyone on board, was that "only feedback"? If I stab my neighbor and call it "performing non-elective surgery" am I practicing NLP? If I am arrested in a drunken state with a knife in my pocket for threatening an ex-girlfriend, am I just "trying to rekindle an old flame"? Another NLP presupposition which is false is "If someone can do something, anyone can learn it." This comes from people who claim they understand the brain and can help you reprogram yours. They want you to think that the only thing that separates the average person from Einstein or Pavarotti or the World Champion Log Lifter is NLP. NLP is said to be the study of the structure of subjective experience, but a great deal of attention seems to be paid to observing behavior and teaching people how to read "body language." But there is no common structure to non-verbal communication, any more than there is a common structure to dream symbolism. There certainly are some well-defined culturally determined non-verbal ways of communicating, e.g., pointing the back of the hand at another, lowering all fingers but the one in the middle, has a definite meaning in American culture. But when someone tells me that the way I squeeze my nose during a conversation means I am signaling him that I think his idea stinks, how do we verify whether his interpretation is correct or not? I deny it. He knows the structure, he says. He knows the meaning. I am not aware of my signal or of my feelings, he says, because the message is coming from my subconscious mind. How do we test these kinds of claims? We can't. What's his evidence? It must be his brilliant intuitive insight because there is no empirical evidence to back up this claim. Sitting cross-armed at a meeting might not mean that someone is "blocking you out" or "getting defensive". She may just be cold or have a back ache or simply feel comfortable sitting that way. It is dangerous to read too much into non-verbal behavior. Those splayed legs may simply indicate a relaxed person, not someone inviting you to have sex. At the same time, much of what NLP is teaching is how to do cold reading. This is valuable, but an art not a science, and should be used with caution. Finally, NLP claims that each of us has a Primary Representational System (PRS), a tendency to think in specific modes: visual, auditory, kinaesthetic, olfactory or gustatory. A person's PRS can be determined by words the person tends to use or by the direction of one's eye movements. Supposedly, a therapist will have a better rapport with a client if they have a matching PRS. None of this has been supported by the scientific literature.* Bandler's Institute Bandler's First Institute of Neuro-Linguistic Programming™ and Design Human Engineering™ has this to say about NLP:
We are told that Bandler took as his first models Virginia Satir ("The Mother of Family System Therapy"), Milton Erickson ("The Father of Modern Hypnotherapy") and Fritz Perls (early advocate of Gestalt Therapy) because they "had amazing results with their clients." The linguistic and behavioral patterns of such people were studied and used as models. These were therapists who liked such expressions as 'self-esteem', 'validate', 'transformation', 'harmony', 'growth', 'ecology', 'self-realization', 'unconscious mind', 'non-verbal communication', 'achieving one's highest potential'--expressions which serve as beacons to New Age transformational psychology. No neuroscientist or anyone who has studied the brain is mentioned as having had any influence on NLP. Also, someone who is not mentioned, but who certainly seems like the ideal model for NLP, is Werner Erhard. He started est a few miles north (in San Francisco) of Bandler and Grinder (in Santa Cruz) just a couple of years before the latter started their training business. Erhard seems to have set out to do just what Bandler and Grinder set out to do: help people transform themselves and make a good living doing it. NLP and est also have in common the fact that they are built up from a hodgepodge of sources in psychology, philosophy, and other disciplines. Both have been brilliantly marketed as offering the key to success, happiness, and fulfillment to anyone willing to pay the price of admission. Best of all: no one who pays his fees fails out of these schools! the ever-evolving Bandler When one reads what Bandler says, it may lead one to think that some people sign on just to get the translation from the Master Teacher of Communication Skills himself:
Many would surely agree that with communication like this Bandler must have a very special code for programming his brain. Bandler claims he keeps evolving. To some, however, he may seem mainly concerned with protecting his economic interests by trademarking his every burp. He seems extremely concerned that some rogue therapist or trainer might steal his work and make money without him getting a cut. One might be charitable and see Bandler's obsession with trademarking as a way to protect the integrity of his brilliant new discoveries about human potential (such as charisma enhancement) and how to sell it. Anyway, to clarify or to obscure matters--who knows which?-- what Bandler calls the real thing can be identified by a license and the trademark™ from The Society of Neuro-Linguistic Programming™. However, do not contact this organization if you want detailed, clear information about the nature of NLP, or DHE (Design Human Engineering™ (which will teach you to hallucinate designs like Tesla did), or PE (Persuasion Engineering™) or MetaMaster Track™, or Charisma Enhancement™, or Trancing™, or whatever else Mr. Bandler and associates are selling these days. Mostly what you will find on Bandler's page is information on how to sign up for one of his training sessions. For example, you can get 6 days of training for $1,800 at the door ($1,500 prepaid). What will you be trained in or for? Bandler has been learning about "the advancement of human evolution" and he will pass this on to you. For $1,500 you could have taken his 3-day seminar on Creativity Enhancement (where you could learn why it's not creative to rely on other people's ideas, except for Bandler's). Grinder and corporate NLP John Grinder, on the other hand, has gone on to try to do for the corporate world what Bandler is doing for the rest of us. He has joined Carmen Bostic St Clair in an organization called Quantum Leap, "an international organisation dealing with the design and implementation of cross cultural communication systems." Like Bandler, Grinder claims he has evolved new and even more brilliant "codes".
It may strike some people that terms like "personal congruity" are not very precise or scientific. This is probably because Grinder has created a "new paradigm". Or so he says. He denies that his and Bandler's work is an eclectic hodgepodge of philosophy and psychology, or that it even builds from the works of others. He believes that what he and Bandler did was "create a paradigm shift." The following claim by Grinder provides some sense of what he thinks NLP is:
One can only hope that Bandler wasn't thinking the same things that Grinder was thinking, at least with respect to Kuhn's classic text. Kuhn did not promote the notion that not being particularly qualified in a scientific field is a significant condition for contributing to the development of a new paradigm in science. Furthermore, Kuhn did not provide a model or blueprint for creating paradigm shifts! His is an historical work, describing what he believed to have occurred in the history of science. Nowhere does he indicate that a single person at any time did, or even could, create a paradigm shift in science. Individuals such as Newton or Einstein might provide theories which require paradigm shifts for their theories to be adequately understood, but they don't create the paradigm shifts themselves. Kuhn's work implies that such a notion is preposterous. Grinder and Bandler should have read Kant before they set off on their quixotic pursuit. Kant's "Copernican revolution" might be considered a paradigm shift by Bandler and Grinder, but it is not what Kuhn was talking about when he was describing the historical development of scientific theories. Kuhn restricted his concern to science. He made no claim that anything similar happens in philosophy and he certainly did not imply that anything NLP did, or is doing, constitutes a paradigm shift. Kuhn claimed that paradigm shifts occur over time when one theory breaks down and is replaced by another. Scientific theories break down, he claimed, when new data can't be explained by the old theories or when they no longer explain things as well as some newer theory. What Bandler and Grinder did was not in response to any crisis in theory in any scientific field and so cannot even be considered as contributing to a paradigm shift much less being one itself. What Grinder seems to think Kuhn meant by "paradigm shift" is something like a gestalt shift, a change in the way we look at things, a change in perspective. Kant might fit the bill for this notion. Kant rejected the old way of doing epistemology, which was to ask 'how can we bring ourselves to understand the world?' What we ought to ask, said Kant, is 'how is it possible that the world comes to be understood by us?' This was truly a revolutionary move in the history of philosophy, for it asserted that the world must conform to the conditions imposed on it by the one experiencing the world. The notion that one has the truth when one's mind conforms with the world is rejected in favor of the notion that all knowledge is subjective because it is impossible without experience which is essentially subjective. Copernicus had said, in essence, let's see how things look with the Sun at the center of the universe, instead of the Earth. Kant said, in essence, let's examine how we know the world by assuming that the world must conform to the mind, rather than the mind conform to the world. Copernicus, however, could be considered as contributing to a paradigm shift in science. If he were right about the earth and other planets going around the sun rather than the sun and the other planets going around the earth--and he was--then astronomers could no longer do astronomy without profound changes in their fundamental concepts about the nature of the heavens. On the other hand, there is no way to know if Kant is right. We can accept or reject his theory. We can continue to do philosophy without being Kantians, but we cannot continue to do astronomy without accepting the heliocentric hypothesis and rejecting the geocentric one. What did Grinder and Bandler do that makes it impossible to continue doing psychology or therapy or semiotics or philosophy without accepting their ideas? Nothing. Do people benefit from NLP? While I do not doubt that many people benefit from NLP training sessions, there seem to be several false or questionable assumptions upon which NLP is based. Their beliefs about the unconscious mind, hypnosis and the ability to influence people by appealing directly to the subconscious mind are unsubstantiated. All the scientific evidence which exists on such things indicates that what NLP claims is not true. You cannot learn to "speak directly to the unconscious mind " as Erickson and NLP claim, except in the most obvious way of using the power of suggestion. NLP claims that its experts have studied the thinking of great minds and the behavior patterns of successful people and have extracted models of how they work. "From these models, techniques for quickly and effectively changing thoughts, behaviors and beliefs that get in your way have been developed."* But studying Einstein's or Tolstoy's work might produce a dozen "models" of how those minds worked. There is no way to know which, if any, of the models is correct. It is a mystery why anyone would suppose that any given model would imply techniques for quick and effective change in thoughts, actions and beliefs. I think most of us intuitively grasp that even if we were subjected to the same experiences which Einstein or Tolstoy had, we would not have become either. Surely, we would be significantly different from whom we've become, but without their brains to begin with, we would have developed quite differently from either of them. in conclusion It seems that NLP develops models which can't be verified, from which it develops techniques which may have nothing to do with either the models or the sources of the models. NLP makes claims about thinking and perception which do not seem to be supported by neuroscience. This is not to say that the techniques won't work. They may work and work quite well, but there is no way to know whether the claims behind their origin are valid. Perhaps it doesn't matter. NLP itself proclaims that it is pragmatic in its approach: what matters is whether it works. However, how do you measure the claim "NLP works"? I don't know and I don't think NLPers know, either. Anecdotes and testimonials seem to be the main measuring devices. Unfortunately, such a measurement may reveal only how well the trainers teach their clients to persuade others to enroll in more training sessions. See also est, firewalking, hypnosis, Landmark Forum, large group awareness training, Frederick Lenz (Rama), memory, paradigm, psychoanalysis, and reverse speech. postscript: On a more cheerful note, Bandler has sued Grinder for millions of dollars. Apparently, the two great communicators and paradigm innovators couldn't follow their own advice or perhaps they are modeling their behavior after so many other great Americans who have found that the most lucrative way to communicate is by suing someone with deep pockets. NLP is big on metaphors and I doubt whether this nasty lawsuit is the kind of metaphor they want to be remembered by. Is Bandler's action of putting a trademark on half a dozen expressions a sign of a man who is simply protecting the integrity of NLP or is it a sign of a greedy megalomaniac? further reading
Barry, Dave. "Altered States" in The Miami Herald, April 13, 1997. (Humorist Dave Barry takes Peter Lowe's SUCCESS 1997 12-hour success seminar featuring Anthony Robbins, Elizabeth Dole, Rabbi Harold Kushner, Brian Tracy, Lou Holtz, Jim Morris, Peter Lowe, Pat Riley, Dr. Ted Broer, George Bush, and Dan Kennedy.) Sacks, Oliver W. An anthropologist on Mars : seven paradoxical tales (New York : Knopf, 1995). Sacks, Oliver W. The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales (New York : Summit Books, 1985). Sacks, Oliver W. A leg to stand on (New York : Summit Books, 1984). Schacter, Daniel L. Searching for Memory - the brain, the mind, and the past (New York: Basic Books, 1996).
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©copyright 2005 Robert Todd Carroll |
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updated 01/21/08 |
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